Pork and Pineapple Enchiladas

Hi folks!

It’s been a while since I posted a recipe up here but my dinner tonight was just too good not to share! Really easy too which is ALWAYS a plus! I always like doing leftovers a completely different way. It makes the pain of eating leftovers that much less. And let me tell you, we had a hell of a lot of leftovers.

Yesterday we made some pork bbq using the nectar of the gods…

Yes, that’s Mermaid BBQ, but this is their Pineapple Teriyaki, which we’ve only used once before. I was excited to try it with something else (the first time we made it with chicken on the grill).  It’s so freaking good. Like most of their sauces! And I only say most because I’ve only tried 2 (and their rub) but they have more that I need to get to trying!

So back to the leftovers. I had made some pulled pork sammies but as we were eating them my husband had mentioned that he wasn’t sure what I was planning to do with the pork. I asked him what he meant and he was all, “Well, I dunno, I was thinking you might do like, tacos or something.” Interesting. I hadn’t thought of doing anything but sandwiches but as soon as he said it I got to thinking about it… and I’m glad he mentioned it because they were delicious.

Ingredients

3-4 cups of pork bbq*
1/2 bottle of Mermaid BBQ Pineapple Teriyaki sauce (you’ll be using another bottle and a half if you make the pork)
1/2 bag of mixed sliced peppers (or 2 fresh peppers, sliced/diced)
1/2 bag of diced onion (or 1/2 of a large onion, diced)
1 large can of crushed pineapple
2 cups of cheddar cheese
1 package of 10″ tortillas, any variety you like.

*If you’re making the pulled pork, you’ll need about a 5lb pork shoulder, 2 onions (rough chopped), and 2 jars of Mermaid Pineapple Teriyaki BBQ sauce (which we cooked in 1.5 bottles of the BBQ sauce, in our slow cooker for about 8 hours – it had been a 6 lb pork shoulder).  

So, as for how the process works, it’s pretty simple.

First you want to pre-heat your oven to 350. While that’s heating up, you’re going to re-heat your pork to a warmer non-fridge temp (if you’re not using fresh pork bbq) so that you’re not putting it into the enchiladas cold (1 minute in the microwave should be enough). Then you want to saute the peppers and onions in a pan until the onions are translucent, it should take about 8 minutes or so.

 

You then want to lay out your tortillas next to your pan of pepper/onion mixture, your opened can of pineapple and your pork, so as to have a nice little assembly line. Fill each tortilla in this order – 2 heaping tablespoons of the mixed pepper/onion mixture,  1/2 – 3/4 cup of pork, and 2 heaping tablespoons of the crushed pineapple. It’ll look a little something like this:

The fold the tortilla up, and lay them into the pan. Then you want to top the closed tortillas with the 1/2 bottle of BBQ sauce. A few heaping tablespoons of pineapple spread out evenly (about this much – see below)

 

Then you want to finish it off with your cheese, and put it into the oven for about 20 minutes. When everything is said and done you’ll have something that looks like this:

 

See all that delicious crispy cheese on the side? I like to finish it off with the low broiler for like, 3 minutes, but watch it so it doesn’t burn because boilers are a tricky mistress! But, a nice crispy top cheese layer is worth the risk!

I served it with some rice and refried beans and it was sooo yummy! The pineapple was such a delicious addition to the enchiladas and made them really refreshing but at the same time it was very filling. I couldn’t even finish my whole enchilada…. ok I did, but it took me a few breaks.

I hope you like them!

 

Ravens Super Bowl Parade

Since I work in/for Baltimore City, it was pretty easy to have an amazing view for the celebratory parade for the Ravens after they WON THE FREAKING SUPER BOWL!

I took a bunch of pictures and thought I’d share them with you folks, in case you’re not facebook friends with me and got to see them as it was happening 🙂

Oh, and here are some videos I took (it was really loud and I was being somewhat pushed so sorry for the video quality. What can I say, I’m no Liquid Squid Productions (my friends are super talented!)

This first video is the start of the parade with the Ravens Marching Band and cheerleaders

The next video is Baltimore’s sacred son (next to Cal Ripken, Jr. of course), Ray Lewis

And here are the pictures from before and during the parade…

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Super Bowl Party

Hey folks,

So, first I posted all the deliciousness I was thinking about making, but there’s a little difference between what I could make and what I ended up making. Since I pretty much invited myself over to my friend Ashleys house and asked her to have a party, so as not to have to venture into the City, I thought I’d try to make as many of the appetizers as I could (and cupcakes, not pictured but they were chocolate with purple icing and black sprinkles). Plus, who doesn’t need a reason to gorge? Isn’t that what American and the Super Bowl is all about? And I am nothing, if not a True American.

So for the menu, I wanted a little mix of slightly healthy, medium healthy, and possible entry for TIWYF. I think the menu is definitely a good little compromise.

Under the slightly healthy appetizer category, we made a shrimp salsa.

I wasn’t sure if it would turn out but I actually thought it was pretty awesome. I used this recipe almost exactly except that I used a little less shrimp. The recipe says to use a pound and I could only find a 12oz bag, but I thought it was fine. I also didn’t use quite as much cilantro because I’m just not a huge cilantro fan. There comes a point where I think it tastes like soap. I don’t know what it is. Oh, and of course I’m serving it with blue (but purple for tonight) tortilla chips.

Next up we have another mostly healthy recipe with these purple deviled eggs.

I didn’t really love the recipe ideas as far as how to dye the eggs. I saw that you could dye them with beet juice, red wine, etc. I decided to just go old school and use food coloring. I think they turned out pretty well. I used my moms deviled egg “recipe”. The thing about my moms recipe is that really it’s just “a little bit of this, a little bit of that”. Not exactly the best recipe to hand out to everyone but I’ll still put the general recipe at the bottom of the page, and how to dye them. I guess everyone has their own way of making them.

Next we’ll go with a slightly less healthier recipe, in my TIWYF candidate – bacon wrapped lil’ smokies in a brown-sugar maple glaze.

Sorry for the picture, it seems the only one I took was mid-cooking so the bacon wasn’t totally done and it may look like they’re sitting in grease but I promise it’s just the glaze. Also, I would take them out of the glaze and put them on a plate to serve them just to prevent them from getting TOO greasy.

This is the recipe I used and it made about… 60 lil’ smokies? Give or take? It filled a 9×13 pan. And they were freaking DELICIOUS! I cannot wait to make these again for any kind of food eating extravaganza! They were so simple to make (maybe 20 minutes to wrap everything in bacon) and unlike how the recipe said I should freeze the lil’ smokies, I just took them right out of the fridge with the bacon and wrapped them up, and it worked just fine. I will say their recommendation to “dry off” the lil’ smokies to help them stick to the bacon better. I didn’t do that at first and quickly realized it was necessary.

We also made Zacks family dip.

(Disregard the weird yellowishness in the dip, that’s maple glaze I spilled on the dip. Didn’t even realize I did it until I was looking at the picture on my computer. Whoops!) Like the deviled eggs, it’s not a precise recipe, it’s kind of like our spaghetti sauce, you have the ingredients and the rough amounts but really you just have to keep adding and tasting until it’s the right consistency. I’m not even going to attempt to give you a recipe because well, it’s private, but if you want to try it, I can tell you it has 2 packages of cream cheese, milk, onion powder and Worcestershire sauce. The only amounts I know are the cream cheese. Maybe one day I’ll make it and Zack can tell me how he does it. Until them, I am happily the taste tester and nothing more 🙂

We also had some yummy Ledo’s Pizza, meatballs, and queso dip. Everything was delicious, but nothing was as delicious as Beyonce’s Super Bowl performance… oh, and the Ravens winning. And John Harbaugh when he smiles. Those are all delicious things too.

Many thanks to my dear friend Ashley and her husband for inviting us over! It was a great way to spend the evening!

Ravens Egg Recipe

1 doz large hard-boiled eggs
3 heaping tbsp of mayonnaise (although my mom is adamant about Miracle Whip!)
1 tbsp mustard (yellow or dijon)
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp Texas Pete Hot Sauce
Paprika for sprinkling

Cut the hard boiled eggs in half and gently remove the yolks.
Mix the yolks and the remaining ingredients except the paprika, in a food processor.
Pulse for about 10 seconds, taste, adjust.

How’s that for a recipe? What’s worse is that I hate deviled eggs so I always have to make sure someone that likes deviled eggs is around so they can taste them and tell me what they need more of. In this instance, and in most, it’s my husband, the deviled egg lover. The dying of the eggs part is a little more specific.

By specific, I mean beyond simple. Fill a bowl that will fit all your hard boiled egg whites, with ice cold water (but don’t add the egg whites yet). Then add dye until it’s the color you want – for me it was about 3-4 drops of “violet” which was actually blue, and 3 drops of red. Then you want to place your already cut (with the yolks removed) egg whites into the water, put it in the fridge for 2 hours, and you’re done! As with most dying processes, the more dark you want it, the longer you leave it in the dye. For me that was 2 hours.

I used a piping bag (aka ziploc) to get the yolk mixture into the egg whites. It’s a lot cleaner and prettier than attempting to spoon the mixture in. One the mixture is in, gently sprinkle with paprika.

Also, because they’re purple, with yellow centers, I was calling them Ravens Eyes. Although sprinkling them with paprika made that a little weird. haha.

Twitter Says The Ravens Win!

So, I’m not really the right person to write about football… however –

And you’ll never guess what I was doing while watching the Super Bowl? Yeah, I was on twitter. Trolling around gazing at the hilarity. So, I thought I’d take a little social media stroll down Super Bowl 47 lane…

Obviously there were the major events like Beyonce, but people watch for other reasons. There’s obviously the commercials, comedians tweeting, the sibling rivalry and the Blackout. I mean, for me, I was pretty much watching FOR Queen Bey (KingB according to Diddy)! And of course, there was PuppyBowl. That’s basically how I broke down this post, so we’ll talk about it in that order, shall we?

Who wants to see tweets about the actual game anyway? I mean, you saw it, you know the facts. So lets just talk about all the accessory events 🙂

First and foremost, there was Beyonce. Here are some of the reasons I personally loved the halftime show:

 

 

But really, this was what I loved the most. I’d heard rumor of a Destiny’s Child reunion, but as soon as I heard the famous words “Kelly, can you handle this?” I knew it was real! There they were, in all their black leather fiery glory!

And how could anyone not love Jay-Z hugging Beyonce when all was said and done? As much as I would’ve loved to see him on stage, it was nice to just see him relish in his wife’s accomplishments and to just support her when all was said and done. God I love them! 

And here are some things that twitter loved about Beyonce:

And I’m with you Andy Cohen! I loved it so much too!! I also really liked Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s take on Beyonces performance:

 

And this girls, who shared my own personal opinion (and that of many other ladies, I have to imagine):

 If that wasn’t enough Beyonce love for you, you can check out all the glory that was the halftime show, right here. And if you love Shaq as much as you love Beyonce, you might want to check this out, right here.

——————————————————-

As for the commercials, there were ones I loved (and I didn’t think it was racist, for the record), there were some I really loved, and then there was that one I won’t even put a link to because I don’t want to support the disgusting vomit-worthy thing that was the GoDaddy commercial. Seriously, Vom. If you want to see all the commercials, you can click here (thanks Buzzfeed!).

——————————————————-

Next up were the comedians tweeting (and journalists, and sports reporters, and the rest of the world).  There were a few people that were just extra funny last night. I mentioned NDT above, but there were more! Below are some of my favorites:

That last little grouping is just a mix of what I like to call Chick Tweets. I realize they aren’t all chicks and that “chicks” may be offensive to chicks who like football. Maybe we should just call it, “people who watch for reasons other than the football”.

——————————————————-

And now, it is time….

We should probably talk about “The Blackout”.

I loved all the ways people thought to tweet about the blackout (excellent use of Clark Griswold above. When it comes to lights not working, it’s most likely his fault). First there were people who had their conspiracy theories of why the lights went out.

And then there were folks who looked at the blackout as an opportunity. An opportunity for just that much more alcohol…

These were some of my favorites because I think they were the most accurate and true. Especially in Baltimore!

Speaking of Baltimore, here were some of my favorite links about Baltimore, Post-Super Bowl:

For fans of the Wire

For People who Wished they were in Baltimore

And finally,

For People Who Don’t Know where Baltimore Is

I think what most Baltimore fans were thinking after the blackout though, was:

And all I was thinking was:

Yeah, we’re dumb.

——————————————————-

Now, once the game was over, it was just all fun and games.

First the pictures started coming…

That’s the best post-game image I’ve seen yet!

Then the memes…

And then the tweets came pouring in…

While Flacco got the MVP (whether he deserved it or not is debatable), he certainly wasn’t the most talked about once everything was over. That honor goes to Ray Lewis, love him or hate him. And apparently a lot of people seem to go very strongly one way or the other…

But really, is Tucker Max someone anyone still pays attention to? At least Ken Jennings was comical.

——————————————————-

Ok now lets leave this post, talking about what my favorite part of the Super Bowl was!

What’s that? You missed the puppy bowl? No worries!

——————————————————-

And with that, I think Super Bowl XLVII is officially in the books! Hope everyone enjoyed the game. I’m just happy the right team won (well, since it couldn’t be the Redskins).

Oh and lets not forget…

GO O’S!!